Video Game / Dead Rising 3

When all you have is a sledgehammer, a cement saw and tons of duct tape...

Welcome to the After Party.

Dead Rising 3 is the third game (not counting spinoffs like Case Zero or Off The Record) in Capcom's Dead Rising series, released on November 22nd, 2013.

Ten years have passed since the Fortune City outbreak. The US government and Phenotrans are slowly but surely making progress towards containing the zombie virus, mainly by beginning to implant biochips into all infected citizens. These biochips supply infectees with daily doses of Zombrex to prevent them from turning, and track them through GPS systems in the event they do turn. While this move has proven controversial, with a band of so-called "Illegals" refusing to get Zombrex chips citing that they're turning the US into a surveillance state, it has been able to contain the infection well enough.

Unfortunately, due to mysterious circumstances, a zombie outbreak has occurred in Los Perdidos, California, turning the city into a disaster zone within days. This leave our protagonist, a young mechanic named Nick Ramos, with one chance at survival - work with his friends Dick Baker, Rhonda Kreske, and any other survivors he comes across along the way, to fix a small plane he's been working on and use it to escape Los Perdidos before it gets firebombed by the US military in six days' time.

Initially announced in 2010 following the sales success of Dead Rising 2, Dead Rising 3 made its debut at E3 2013, where it was announced as an exclusive launch title for the Xbox One. It was later ported to the PC via Steam in September of 2014.

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Dead Rising 3 provides examples of:

A-G

• Action Girl: Annie a.k.a. Katey Greene, who saves Nick from a horde by blazing away with a machine gun. In the game, she also manages to make her way through a crowd of zombies wielding only a baseball bat, and helps him bluff General Hemlock. Nick's boss Rhonda, a heavily-tattooed mechanic, is also pretty efficient at killing zombies (most notably in the beginning when she drives a crowbar right through a zombie's skull).
• An Arm and a Leg: Rhonda gets her arm cut off when she is tortured by Hemlock's men. Luckily, she replaces it with a hand-made flamethrower.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: Beating Nightmare Mode will give you the The First Armor. Subverted though, as X's Arm Cannon is a fully functioning weapon.
• Another Side, Another Story: The DLC for the game lets you to play as four other characters in Los Perdidos at the time of the outbreak, two of them being bosses fought by Nick during the main game.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Giving food to survivors makes them holster their weapon as they eat rather than making them drop or give you their weapon like in the previous games.
  • Eating food is much faster than before and can be done while moving.
  • Saving can be done in the pause menu instead of being restricted to bathrooms.
  • Combo Weapons can be crafted on the fly.
• Artificial Brilliance: The zombies' intelligence is said to have improved from previous games. They are now attracted to sound, they can use weapons effectively, and can even latch onto the vehicle Nick is in and attack him while he's driving!
• Authority Equals Asskicking: General Hemlock, who becomes the de-facto dictator of the United States, is also a surprisingly skilled combatant, being the final boss of the main storyline.
• Badass Bystander: Jeremy, a survivor Nick encounters on the north bridge of Los Perdidos. Although he seems to be in a situation similar to the stranded survivors, he's actually getting along just fine on his own. In fact, he even has a truck full of supplies that he's willing to share with Nick whenever the latter passes by.
  • Not only that, despite being a minor character, he reappears in the epilogue DLC The Last Agent, escaping Los Perdidos alongside Rhonda Kreske, Gary Finkle, and Brad Park.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Isabella Keyes started the outbreak to find the one person immune to the zombie plague so she could make a cure and go down in history as a hero. Her plan works and she escapes the city without anybody realizing she was the one responsible for starting the outbreak.
• Basement-Dweller: Teddy and Kenny.
• Berserk Button: Implying that Darlene is fat and calling Jherii a man are very bad ideas.
• Biblical Motifs: A few;
  • The 7 optional psychopaths are themed around the Seven Deadly Sins, Greed is the only sin to be a mandatory boss fight. Red is also theorised to represent the unofficial 8th sin, despair, because of his betrayal in the semi-final chapter.
  • Commander Adam Kane is named after the biblical Cain from the story of Cain and Abel. Angel Quijano is themed around a fallen angel, as shown by her name and Jamie Flynt's final line at the end of her story.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Mallon returns from Case West in an allegiance with General Hemlock who assumes the role of Big Bad after he throws her off the landing pad for his aircraft and is the final boss of the game.
  • The Man Behind the Man: And the Big Bad behind the Big Bads is Isabela Keyes. She was responsible for the outbreak, and thus the events of Dead Rising 3, in the first place, having set it up to make a name for herself should she find the cure.
• Body Horror: The King Zombies; somehow they have a bee hive growing out of their shoulders and heads. It's implied that the hive is made up of their own mutated flesh.
• Book Ends: The main storyline begins with Nick and several survivors fleeing away from a diner into the city. The last storyline DLC ends with Brad and several survivors fleeing the city to be picked up by a helicopter at the same diner.
• Boring, but Practical
  • Of the combo weapons Heavy Metal when you have pipe type expertise is very much this. It takes two pipes to make which can be found often enough to keep a steady supply. It's medium speed, high damage, as a combo weapon it was fairly solid durability, and the strong attack is a spinning swing. Out of the combo weapons it's so very, very dull but its reliability is beyond question. Good for clearing the way, solid damage, and easy to have on hand in almost any area.
  • The split shot is an assault rifle and a lead pipe. With expertise any gun and rod. Each bullet comes out as a fan of 5 shots and its rapid fire. At high gun skill the bullets perice, it has good ammo, and its componets aren't exactly rare especially jury rigged. Its best use is clearing out a large crowd on foot as it will mow through common zombies at high shooting skill and its execution, shoot an ememy point blanks 5 times, will perice with the skill unlocked and give you breathing room in a crowd.
• Boss-Altering Consequence:
  • Albert Contiello, the Psychopath of Greed, is an organ harvester and will become furious if you destroy one of his organ coolers, his one source of income, and becomes vulnerable to being injected with his own syringe, dealing major damage.
  • Harry "Zhi" Wong, the Psychopath of Wrath, is angered by loud noises, and will become momentarily stunned if you hit one of the gongs in his garden.
  • Darlene Fleischermacher, the Psychopath of Gluttony, will be angered if you try to eat some of her food. You can eat this food to restore some health if you run out of food items, but you'll vomit it all back up if you eat too much and don't press the button prompt in time.
  • Kenny Dermot, the Psychopath of Envy, will become jealous if you build a combo weapon, causing him to throw a fit and become vulnerable to attacks.
  • Jherri Gallo, the Psychopath of Pride, will become upset if you counter her grabs, and will go to a mirror and start exercising to rebuild her pride. This leaves her vulnerable to grapple attacks.
  • Dylan Fuentes, the Psychopath of Lust, may request you to pole dance for him. Fulfilling that request will arouse him and leave him exposed to grapple attacks.
• Breakable Weapons: All weapons break over time, though some last longer than others.
• Breaking Old Trends:
  • Nick is of Hispanic descent, the first protagonist to be so. He’s also significantly younger than both Frank and Chuck.
  • The first two games are set during September, where this game takes place in March.
• Call-Back: Slappy appears again as a face on the front of the "Party Slapper" combo vehicle and on a poster in a toy store.
  • After Nick defeats Diego, the two enter a room in the museum filled with information and artifacts (such as the Chuck Greene standees) about the two previous games. This becomes more significant.
  • The end of the cutscene before the boss fight with Darlene is near-identical to the scene before the fight with Steven Chapman, with screaming of a word and a Vertigo Effect shot of the player character.
  • You can create Adam's Mini-chainsaws and Steven's Weapon Cart as combo weapons.
  • While at the mortuary, you can visit the cancelled funeral for the late Otis Washington.
• Capcom Sequel Stagnation: Parodied with the title of the Super Ultra Dead Rising 3 Arcade Remix Hyper Edition EX Plus Alpha DLC.
• Conspiracy Theorist: One survivor named Kylie believes the government is behind the zombie outbreak, but somehow comes to the conclusion later that aliens were behind it all. Surprisingly enough, she was actually correct the first time.
• Continuity Nod: Joey, the guy who wants to film a zombie porn film, is listening to a Bibi Love track when you walk in.
• Cowardly Lion: Unlike Frank West and Chuck Greene, who usually keep their cool around zombies, Nick gets nervous and panicked when surrounded by a horde of the undead and his first instinct is usually to run away from them. That won't stop him from fighting his way through crowds of zombies anyway if he has no other choice.
• Create Your Own Villain: Kenny is first encountered as a survivor sobbing on a rooftop that he is powerless to defend himself and is going to die. Nick's well-meaning attempt to give him a little self-confidence directly leads to fighting him as a Psychopath later in the story.
  • In a downplayed example, the fight with Jherii probably could have been avoided if Nick hadn't kept accidentally calling her "sir".
• Cutscene Incompetence: In one cutscene, Nick tries to fight one of the Spec Ops in hand-to-hand and gets instantly curbstomped (as you'd expect from an untrained mechanic going up against a professional soldier). In gameplay, you'll slaughter those guys by the dozens.
  • Of course, that merely sets up a scene further down the game where Nick is caught unarmed by another Spec Ops soldier and promptly takes the soldier apart.
    • In cutscenes you will regularly be overpowered, blindsided, sucker-punched, ambushed and beaten regardless of the fact that you're probably a walking arsenal and the zombie apocalypse scenario pretty much demands good situational awareness to survive. Seriously, you will learn to dread the game taking control away from you.
• Darker and Edgier: After Dead Rising 2 brightened up the atmosphere a bit, and Off the Record cranked that up to eleven, Dead Rising 3 reintroduces the bleak, solemn tone that the original Dead Rising was known for.
• Death from Above: Teddy decides Nick is a problem when he asks for the armory key and sics several robotic drone helicopters to kill him.
  • One of Diego's tactics during his Psychopath fight is to grab planet and asteroid models from the ceiling and throw them down at Nick.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Similar to Paul in the first game and Bibi in the second, you can recruit Kenny, a nerd envious of Nick's skills, after you defeat him and then choose to save him, although you can also opt leave him to die at the hands of zombies.
• Depraved Bisexual: Dylan, the psychopath of Lust, seems to be attracted to both genders, as he picks on both male and female victims, and even hits on Nick when he comes in, asking him to "lick his lollipop".
• Devoured by the Horde: Albert Contiello sees his death as this, thanks to his drugs. In reality, it's him cutting himself open with his own surgical saw.
• Dirty Coward:
  • Nick in Ending D, where he tries to steal the plane in order to save his own skin. It ends badly for him, with the group taking the plane and leaving without him in retaliation.
  • Snake in the Chaos Rising DLC gladly betrays Hunter and aids Spider in taking over the Kings of Chaos gang, but when Hunter comes to kill him and take his ring, he flees while begging for his life, insisting that he was only acting on orders. This does nothing to persuade Hunter, who kills him in order to reduce Spider's grip on the gang.
• Disc-One Nuke:
  • The Ultimate Mecha Dragon, which requires 2 other blueprints, which can be all found a short walk from Rhonda's garage in the prologue - along with their constituent parts, are some of the most powerful weapon in the game, able to clear huge crowds of zombies, but also tear Psychos and human enemies to pieces. Having a set on hand makes the rest of the game much, much, much easier.
  • The Grim Reaper is likewise a gold Super Combo Weapon that can be found just across the street from Rhonda's garage and is one of the strongest available weapons against crowds of zombies, and is pretty decent against psychopaths and bandits also.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Jherii tries to kill Nick after he accidentally pushes her Berserk Button of insinuating that she's a man one too many times. Darlene also stabs a starving survivor to death when he tries to eat from the buffet that she's hoarding, and then tries to kill Nick when he tries to convince her that she's had enough to eat.
• Doppelgänger Spin: Albert, the psychopath of Greed, injects Nick with a fluid that makes him hallucinate other survivors as a clone of Albert. Nick has to figure out which is the real Albert to avoid harming regular survivors. The key is to either look for the one that attacks the others, or throw one of the Organ Coolers, which have the added benefit of making him vulnerable to a grapple.
• Dystopia Is Hard: General Hemlock learns this in any ending where he completes his plan. Turns out that soldiers won't follow a man who threatens to unleash zombies on their families and friends, and/or fight against a government that does so. He either destroys the country or is executed for treason.
• Elite Zombie: Certain zombie types are tougher than normal and have special abilities; this is foreshadowed early on with a survivor commenting on how some zombies seem to be able to recall combat skills from their human lives. Cop zombies can fire handguns (although their aim is beyond terrible), firefighter zombies are heavily armored and swing fire axes, football player zombies are heavily armored and have a charging tackle as well as a powerful melee swing, prisoner zombies are Giant Mook enemies with lots of health and powerful melee attacks, and soldier zombies are well-armored and sweep the area with assault rifles (like cop zombies, their aim is terrible, but a full auto assault rifle really compensates for that). All special zombies grant extra PP when you kill one.
• Enemy Posturing: During her boss fight, Jherii will sometimes stop in front of the mirror to lift weights, allowing you to grab her and choke her out.
• Escort Mission: Subverted for the most part; many survivors no longer require to be escorted after they are rescued, as they simply go their own way after you kill all the zombies surrounding them, and some don't even need to be rescued from anything and simply ask you to do favors for them. Some survivors are even strong enough to be used as allies in battle.
• Expy: Los Perdidos is clearly based on Los Angeles.
• Extendo Boxing Glove: The Glove Gun is one of the many combo weapons that can be made, and it's created by combining a cardboard cutout and a pogostick. Don't ask us where they get that rubber foam finger.
• Failure Is the Only Option: Canonically, Hemlock's plan ends up going nowhere due to Nick and Chuck destroying his drones and killing him, but even in the non-canon endings, his plan ends up failing; the country and his army refuse to take his crimes lying down, and depending on the ending, he's either arrested for treason or throws the country into a civil war.
• Famed In-Story: Frank and Chuck have stand-outs of them in the Los Perdidos museum's exhibit on the history of zombies.
• Fan Disservice: Darlene, she shows a lot of skin and it's not exactly the kind of skin you'd usually like..
• Fat Bitch: Darlene, an overweight competitive eating champion, is a psychopath who represents the sin of Gluttony. She hoards a large supply of food (at an all-you-can-eat buffet, no less) and kills anyone who tries to take it.
• Fighting Your Friend: Diego, an old friend of Nick, goes temporarily crazy at one point, and Nick has to fight him while he's dressed as an astronaut.
• Fire, Ice, Lightning: The Elemental Staff, a super combo weapon that's the overall combination of a traffic light, car battery, liquid nitrogen canister, and propane tank
• Face Death with Dignity: One survivor named Meryl Jefferson was diagnosed with terminal cancer shortly before the outbreak hit. Her side mission is nothing more than giving her a lift to revisit her most important spots in life and taking her home, so she can wait for the end. She even has a unique notification at the end of the mission where it's stated she "passed away" rather than "dying" (it also serves as a means of making her death more peaceful).
• Foreshadowing:
  • When Nick opens the garage where Red left the fuel car, he finds a king zombie waiting for him inside. This hints that Red is The Mole and most likely put the zombie there to kill him.
  • When Nick claims that he knows the truth about being immune to the zombie infection, Hemlock yells that he knows nothing, indicating that there's more to the story that Nick hasn't found out about, like Isabella being behind the whole thing.
  • There are some small things that hint to a connection to Dead Rising 2.
    • The walkie talkie Gary uses to talk to his boss looks and sounds exactly the same as the one Chuck Greene had in Fortune City.
    • The girl Gary was looking for in the Morgue, Nicole White, looks extremely similar to Annie, whose real name is Katey Greene, and both names follow a pattern of having a color for a last name.
  • Chuck explains that unlike Frank, he doesn't trust Isabela ever since he met her during Case West. As it turns out, Isabela was the true mastermind behind the outbreak.
• Four Is Death: As discovered in the exhibit that covers the events of the two previous games, the first post-Willamette outbreak was caused by Carlito's Laser Guided Tyke Bomb marked with a "4" tattoo.
• Franken-vehicle: Combo Vehicles are made by combining two vehicles together. One example is the RollerHawg, made by combining a Steamroller with a Motorcycle.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Nick is shown to be hesitant over taking a human life after indirectly causing Hunter's death, but this by killing bikers prior to Hunter's appearance (or by having Nick kill survivors prior to meeting the biker gang).
  • Surprisingly, the "being bitten without becoming infected" mechanic is actually integrated into the story by having Nick be The Immune, although he doesn't figure this out until later.
• Guest-Star Party Member: Some survivors can be recruited as temporary back-up to help Nick fight zombies or scavenge for weapons.

H-Z

• Harder Than Hard: Nightmare Mode bumps up the difficulty and playstyle closer to that of the previous games. Time moves quadruple fast, enemies take less damage while you take more, and saving can only be done at restrooms. It's worth it for the X Buster, though.
• Hoist by Their Own Petard: All of the Seven Deadly Sins psychopaths have a related weakness, and many of them are done in by their own sins.
  • Zhi (Wrath) falls into Angrish if his gongs are hit; after being defeated, he gets so angry at the world that he commits suicide by beheading himself.
  • Albert (Greed) can be distracted if the player grabs or throws his harvested organs; gets injected with his own syringe and disembowels himself while hallucinating that he's being eaten alive by zombies.
  • Darlene (Gluttony) will pause to eat, which heals her but causes her to drop her guard; the player then can punch her or shove burgers down her throat, to make her vomit. Finally, she dies by choking on her own vomit from eating so much.
  • Jherii (Pride) admires herself at a mirror at random; after being defeated, she tries to support herself on her trophy case, and gets crushed to death when it topples over.
  • Dylan (Lust) suffocates from inhaling too much of the gas emitted from his flamethrower, which he held at his crotch and treated as an extension of that venerable organ. Also, he can decide to go for one of his prisoners, basically forgetting that Nick is there.
  • Teddy (Sloth) doesn't even fight Nick directly; instead, he dies from a heart attack brought on by his sedentary lifestyle and poor diet when Nick bursts into his control room.
  • The sole exception is Kenny (Envy). While he gets angrier at Nick (and drops his guard) if he creates a better Combo Weapon during the battle, and while he can be devoured by the zombies, he can be saved and recruited. The only lasting injury he sustains is to his ego.
  • Several bosses are done in by their own weapons, as well. Hunter tries running Nick down with his steamroller, only to crash into an oil tanker and explode. The aforementioned psychopaths all perish by their own weapons; including Darlene, who finds herself hopelessly wedged beneath her own upturned scooter, unable to turn herself over to regurgitate. "Red" Jackson is squashed by a shipping container after imprisoning the girls inside of one.
• Homemade Flamethrower: Continuing the trend of it being a Combo Weapon, Nick can earn the blueprints to create a flamethrower, made using a leaf blower and some cooking oil (although the final product also has a few extra parts).It's unlocked when Nick has to create a new arm for Rhonda after her old fleshy one was amputated when she was being interrogated.
  • Then there's also Dylan's Lust Cannon, a very phallic weapon that fires both flames and liquid nitrogen thanks to two ball-shaped tanks.
• Hypocrite: The military under General Hemlock's command brand the Illegals criminals for spreading the infection to the city and the deaths of thousands of innocent civillians. Under Hemlock's orders however, not only they didn't rescue anyone and kill innocent bystanders, they also helped Hemlock to capture King Zombies in order to create a biological weapon that will spread the infection further, making them even bigger criminals that those they condemned.
• I Lied: At the end of Case West, Marian gloats about a permanent cure to the zombie infection and outright tells Frank and Chuck that she doesn't need Zombrex anymore. In this game, she is seen taking Zombrex, and it was implied that she lied in hopes that Frank and Chuck would remain in the exploding facility to search for the cure.
• The Immune: Nick Ramos turns out to be one of Carlito's orphans who was made immune to the zombie parasites, and as a result is the key to ending the zombie outbreaks.
• Improvised Weapon: A given for the series.
• In Medias Res: The game begins two days after the initial outbreak, with Nick searching for an escape route so he and his friends can get out of the city after the initial rescue attempt failed.
• Jerkass: Hank, a survivor who demands that Nick help him mix a bunch of fuels for his RV and insults him repeatedly throughout the process, even throwing a racially-charged line at him.
• Just Following Orders: Adam Kane is the commander in the military operations on Los Perdidos under the orders of General John Hemlock, Kane had a strong sense of patriotic duty due his belief that the government is protecting its people and is an unintentional villain because of his will to blindly follow orders from his superiors no matter what, including hacking and blocking the communications so no one can contact anyone from outside the quarantine zone, infecting the safe houses with zombie virus believing that the ones inside were terrorists that disobeyed the anti-zombie chip law to let the infection spread (which actually are civilians that know the dark truth of the government), and capturing the president to bring her to his commanding officer, but upon seeing that they infected the president and did a few morally ambiguous experiments on infected people, he started to question if the government is actually doing good to its people. When he was ordered to destroy the black box that has evidence on Hemlock's agenda, he lied about destroying it before coming to fight Nick Ramos, the game's main protagonist. After his boss fight against Nick, he managed to barely survive the fight and then find out he was fooled by Hemlock into killing people that knew about his plan on weaponizing the virus. In a attempt to redeem himself, he managed to give the black box to ZDC agent Brad Park, who also had Kane's point of view; as Kane was bitten and infected, his last words and advice for Brad is to not think bad of him because he was following orders before shooting himself in the head, which Brad also agreed since they were both lied and used by the government but Brad learned his lesson faster than Kane
• Lady Looks Like a Dude: Jherii, a female bodybuilder, is mistaken for a man by Nick at first because of her deep voice and muscular body. And oh man, does she not take it well.
• La Résistance: The Illegals, a group of infected who refuse to get the government-mandated chips implanted in them.
• Large Ham: Darlene yells nearly every word she says. She practically makes Steven Chapman look subtle in comparison.
• Lethal Joke Item: Everywhere in the game, considering it's Dead Rising and all. Special mention goes to one of the combo weapons: Kenny's Junk Ball. Yeah, it's underwhelming in appearance and function, being a mass of sharp objects strung together with baling wire, but it deals good damage, has no glaring drawbacks to its use, and perhaps most important of all it's a breeze to make compared to the other combos: one pickup plus almost any other pickup.
• Loads and Loads of Loading: Averted. Loading screens are fewer and much shorter than in the previous two games.
• MacGyvering: Nick has a talent for creating handmade fusion weapons, just as Chuck Greene did. Unlike Chuck, Nick does not need a workbench to do so and can make weapons on the go.
• Meaningful Name: The city name "Los Perdidos" translates as "The Lost Ones" and the game features a few characters who are orphans (most notably Nick and Annie). This gains another meaning when anyone marked with numerical tattoos like Nick and Diego's turn out to be a Laser Guided Tyke Bomb scattered by Carlito prior to the events of the game. There's also the matter of how Annie turns out to be Chuck Greene's lost daughter Katey.
• The Mole: Isabella Keyes has been working with Marian of her own will.
• Moveset Clone: Razorface in the Chaos Rising DLC is one of Jherii, sharing many of her attacks.
• Multiple Endings: Par for the course for the franchise, this game has five:
  • Ending S: Reunite Gary and Rhonda (giving her a flamethrower arm in the process) in Chapter 7, and finish the game from there. Chuck Greene shows up to reunite with his daughter Katey, which was who Annie was the entire time. Hemlock later reveals that he's picking up the king zombies with drones to ship off to the rest of the country. Nick teams up with Chuck to stop him, leaving Annie, Dick and Isabela to fly the plane and pick them up once the job is done. After witnessing Hemlock throwing Marian off a building to her death, Nick and Chuck must then destroy the drones before they can drop off enough zombies to satisfy Hemlock's requirements for world domination. Where this ending goes from there depends on whether you succeed or fail (though the failure cutscene is actually a Non-Standard Game Over rather than a bad ending).
    • Success: After dispatching the king zombies, Nick then fights Hemlock to the death next to his crashed VTOL. Nick succeeds, kicking Hemlock into the still-spinning blades of the VTOL, and waits for the others to pick him up. After the credits, it is revealed that Isabela was responsible for starting the outbreak (something which Marian herself was against), and it was to find the immune orphan (Nick) in hopes of him helping them find a cure.
    • Failure: Hemlock's VTOL makes off with the king zombies, and it can be assumed that Los Perdidos is firebombed shortly afterwards.
  • Ending C: Kill Gary in Chapter 7. Everyone gets on board the plane, but much to their horror, it won't take off, and the runway is littered with zombies. None of the gang live to tell the tale, but Hemlock is at least removed from power and punished for his war crimes.
  • Ending D: Decide to be a complete asshole and attempt to take off in the plane by yourself. Gary, Red, Annie, and Rhonda proceed to stop Nick, and leave without him, despite him claiming he was just messing about.
  • Ending F: Run out of time. Given the setup for this game, you can probably guess what happens.
• Mythology Gag: There's an exhibit about zombies and their recent history in the museum. Many of the standees and exhibit are made out of promotional images that were created for the first two games, including the Zombrex ad.
• New Game Plus: Is a bit more flexible this time around, as you can replay whatever chapter you want while keeping your level and blueprints, rather than starting the entire game over.
• Next Sunday A.D.: The game takes place in the year 2021.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: General Hemlock's men believed that what Hemlock's plan is for the better good of the country and that people like the Illegals and President Paddock are criminals. Then it turns out Hemlock is attempting to use zombies to put the country into martial law for him to rule with an iron fist.
• Obviously Evil/Putting on the Reich: Gen. Hemlock and Hilde's outfits are very reminiscent of SS officers' uniforms. In fact, Hilde looks almost exactly like Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS.
• Oh, Crap!: Nick utters this when he realizes he just pushed Darlene's Berserk Button.
• Pink Is Erotic: Dylan Fuentes is the psychopath who represents the deadly sin of lust. Dylan wears a pink cowboy hat, pink shoes, and pink underwear. His theme also includes lyrics that appear to be Virgin-Shaming and laughing at the response, as they appear to be asking "When was the first time you had sex" before changing the question to "When was the last time you had sex".
• Point Build System: Leveling up and completing certain tasks and chapters earns Nick points towards increasing his attributes.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Many of the side characters and psychopaths are walking stereotypes who order Nick around, shout slurs and insults, and treat women like things to possess. If the intent was to make you feel less remorse about killing them, it worked.
• Practical Taunt: Using the Kinect, one can shout at zombies to goad them into coming towards you, or shout phrases like "You're crazy!" at psychopaths to distract them and make them temporarily vulnerable.
• Precision F-Strike: Nick swears a bit, but only drops the F-Bomb before the boss battle with Red after he sells him out to General Hemlock. Notable since neither Frank or Chuck said it in their games.
  Nick: I'm going to kill you with my bare fucking hands, you son of a bitch!
• Psychological Horror: Albert's psychopath battle has elements of this. Nick is put under the influence of some drug injected into him, and starts to hallucinate other people as clones of Albert and sees them twitch about creepily.
• Put on a Bus: Frank West and Stacey Forsythe are briefly mentioned as still being alive, but having cut all ties with the other main characters over the course of the 10 year time skip.
• Real Is Brown: While previous games have kept a madcap pace and are known for their bright and glitzy locations (a mall and an ersatz Vegas strip), the third game has become much browner, and is supposed to contain more realistic gameplay and physics.
• Rage Against the Heavens: When Zhi is defeated, he blames the universe for how his life fell apart. He lost his job, his wife left him, his kids disrespect him, and now the Zombie Apocalypse.
• Rape, Pillage, and Burn: Isabella explains in her backstory to Nick and Annie that Nick, along with all the other of Carlito's Orphans, were conceived by the U.S soldiers stationed at Santa Cabeza "spread[ing] their seed"; this part in her reveal in accompanied by the brief audio cue of women screaming, showing that it was not consensual. And, of course, we know that Santa Cabeza then suffered the zombie outbreak and the soldiers silencing most of the survivors; destroying the town. Carlito apparently thought it was fitting to send the children back to the country that "helped" create them.
• Revenge Is Not Justice: Zhi is the first optional psychopath Nick faces and he's the embodiment of the deadly sin of wrath. After fighting Nick, Zhi laments about how life has dealt him more than few bad cards; he was fired, his wife left him for another man, his kids disrespect him and he's now suffering from a zombie outbreak. However, Nick responds to his self-pity by saying that none of these things gave him the right to kill others, especially when his victims had nothing to do with the tragedies that befell him or even realized how they offended him in the first place.
  Zhi: Spirit of universe has slaughtered my happiness and so I must slaughter too. All who disrupt my garden of peace shall die! [spits at corpses]
  Nick: Oh God. You did this! These people were just looking for safety, you had no right to kill them!
• Self-Deprecation: The DLC "Super Ultra Dead Rising 3 Arcade Remix Hyper Edition EX Plus Alpha" is Capcom taking a jab at their most infamous business tactic.
• Series Continuity Error/Plot Hole: Neither Nick nor Diego's names appear in the list of orphans◊ that Carlito infected, unless they changed their names, which Isabella implies when she says "Nick? Is that what they call you now?". Also, if going by the numbered tattoos, both genders listed for Nick ("Number 12") and "Number 4" are shown to be female, although there's the possibility that they both changed sexes.
• Seven Deadly Sins:
  • The game's 7 optional bosses are associated with the Seven Deadly Sins.
  • The Overtime Ending also directly links Isabella Keyes with Pride/Lucifer.
  • You could argue that greed also applies to Red, as he betrayed Nick and the others for 5 million dollars. Some also theorize he embodies the obscure eighth deadly sin, despair.
  • Sgt. Hilde Schmittendorf could also pass for lust.
• Shout-Out:
  • You can find the body of a woman with an assault rifle in place of one of her legs.
  • The aptly-named "Dragon Punch" combo weapon allows Nick to perform a Shoryuken, you can dress up as Ryu and Ken, and Diego can perform a Spinning Piledriver on you.
  • Red's demise is similar to the Wicked Witch of the East, complete with the red shoes sticking out.
  • The entire opening scene in the diner is a shout-out to Shaun of the Dead, right down to accidentally alerting the zombies because someone turned on a jukebox by accident.
  • Super Ultra Dead Rising 3' Arcade Remix Hyper Edition EX + Alpha features versions of the three playable characters (Nick, Annie, Chuck, and Frank) wearing costumes of other Capcom characters and using their powers.
    • Nick: Tuxedo Nick (who fights like Dante), Edward Falcon, Felicia, and Ryu
    • Annie: Schoolgirl Annie (who fights like Sakura), Regina, Chun-Li, and Nina
    • Chuck: TIR Chuck, Shoma Sawamura, Sigma, and Captain Commando
    • Frank: Servbot Frank, Haggar, BB Hood, and Soki
  • One of the achievements for killing 100,004 zombies is "Left 100,004 Dead".
  • One survivor can be heard shouting "Get your stinking hands off me, you damn dirty zombie!"
• Slept Through the Apocalypse: Teddy pretty much spent the entire time gaming, sleeping, and feeling his ass grow as the city fell to zombies outside. He's not even aware that there was an outbreak until Nick points it out to him.
• Stock Scream: The Wilhelm scream can be heard in a cutscene in the prison camp.
• Stupid Evil: Isabella Keyes convinces Mallon, against her better judgement, to convince General Hemlock to start an outbreak in Los Perdidos. General Hemlock apparently wanted to assassinate the president in order to take over the US, while Isabella wanted to find #12 (a.k.a. Nick Ramos) in order to research the cure and become famous. To say that the method employed is one of the most risky and inefficient imaginable would be an understatement. Not only are there cleaner and less collaterally damaging ways of assassinating a person, causing a zombie apocalypse to find someone that might quite likely be killed in said apocalypse is beyond stupid, specially when said person has a very obvious tattoo and no real reason to hide it.
• The Smurfette Principle:
  • Annie is the only playable female in Super Ultra Dead Rising 3' Arcade Remix Hyper Edition EX + α.
  • Cannons in the Chaos Rising DLC is the only female member of the Kings of Chaos gang, and is also the only hostile female survivor in the game.
• Sudden Sequel Heel Syndrome:
  • Isabella Keyes turns out to be the mastermind behind the Los Perdidos outbreak, having caused the death of thousands to locate the Immune One (Nick), in order to go down in history as the real hero of the Zombie Wars. The hell of it is, barring DLC that continues the story, she gets away with it.
  • Also, in a more minor example, Chuck Greene became a crime lord sometime after Fortune City in order to be able to obtain enough Zombrex for Katey. This is subverted when you meet him towards the end of the game, as he's still basically a decent guy, and his minions are more loveable rogues than the straight out murderous psychopaths.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Turns out the US military won't follow a dictator that uses zombies to keep the population in line. General Hemlock finds this out in the endings where he completes his Evil Plan and is executed for treason. Or causes the US to collapse into a civil war.
  • The survivor Ravi gives you a plan to combine a cleaver and a chainsaw to make a paired set of mini chainsaws to use against the undead horde. When he sees it, he states that using them is incredibly dangerous and he'd kill himself trying to use them as a weapon. Of course, that doesn't stop you from using it.
• Take Over the World: General Hemlock's plan is basically to use the threat of the king zombies to impose martial law on the U.S., forcing the entire population to submit to his authority.
  • And subverted in any endings that he gets away. Turns out that using Zombies as a threat gets you killed, or rips the country apart as no one will follow you.
• Tarot Motifs: One sidequest involves retrieving a survivor's tarot cards which blew away in the wind. They are all found in suspiciously appropriate places (Strength in the middle of a boxing ring, Death next to a corpse, The Chariot at a used car dealership, etc.)
• Theme Naming: Seven of the psychopaths in the game are named after the Seven Deadly Sins.
• Time Skip: Ten years since part 2.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • One survivor named Hank gets himself blown up by messing around with a propane tank and acetylene to fix his RV despite Nick's warnings on how dangerous it is to do so.
  • An old woman who was accompanying Nick's group in the beginning gets herself killed by running out of panic from the deli they were hiding in and into the crowd of zombies. Wonder if she was related to that old lady back in Willamette.
• Took a Level in Badass: Nick starts out terrified out of his mind, but as he completes missions and gains confidence and levels, he sounds more confident and ready to fight. By the end of Chapter 7, he's skilled enough to take down a Spec Ops solider easily and even give a Pre-Mortem One-Liner to the Psychopath at the end.
• The Unfought: Theodore, the psychopath of Sloth, is not directly fought, as he is too lazy to fight you himself. Instead, he sends his toy helicopters to do the fighting for him. Likewise, Marian is not fought directly, she instead uses machinery to attack you.
• Wham Line: Following Diego's defeat, he utters "Pachamama".
  • "Katey Ann Greene, where have you been?"
• Wham Shot: Following his boss fight, Diego shows Nick a photo of the zombie believed to be the cause of a previous outbreak. He has a similar tattoo to Nick and Diego.
• Video Game Caring Potential: Kenny is the only one of the Seven Deadly Sins Psychopaths in the game that Nick can spare, and he undergoes a Heel–Face Turn if he survives.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: In the game, after you kill a certain amount of zombies, pressing Y and B together near a zombie will result in a grapple that will have Nick perform a satisfying sequence in which you decimate the zombie with your equipped weapon or bare hands. You can also do this to any of the human mooks... The extent of the goriness of these finishers know no bounds, and seeing shirtless bikers and spec ops suffering the same fates can make you feel a bit nauseous.
  • Late in the story, you will find Gary stubbornly refusing to let you pass into a mission critical building. You're supposed to reunite him with his wife Rhonda but nothing really prevents you from saying "screw it" and slaughtering him to get inside. However...
• Video Game Cruelty Punishment: If you kill Gary as mentioned above Rhonda dies and when you finally reach the plane to escape the city it stalls and a huge zombie horde shows up from nowhere and eats everyone. Note that by that point Rhonda has completed her work on the plane and neither she nor Gary board it in the good ending anyway, but while in that ending the plane works fine and the airstrip is completely safe and zombie-free, in here you suffer inevitable death by cutscene. It's as if the Universe itself is punishing you for your callousness.
• Visual Pun: When Nick enters Teddy's control room, the sedentary, overweight man dies from a heart attack and is promptly surrounded by a pool of liquid excrement. In other words, Nick scared the living shit out of Teddy.
• You Monster!: Nick often calls psychopaths out for their crimes.
• Zombie Apocalypse: Well... yeah. Though since then, it's still pretty controlled. The government has even gotten involved by having infected people have Zombrex chips installed to keep an eye on the infected. Though many aren't happy with such a decision.
• Zombie Infectee: Annie is shown to be infected, as one of the "Illegals" who don't have the government-mandated Zombrex chip implanted in her. This in fact is a hint towards her actual identity.

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And the Devil did grin, for his darling sin is pride that apes humility.

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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